A DNA Barcode Library for the Butterflies of North America
A DNA barcode library for the butterflies of North America Jacopo D'Ercole1,2, Vlad Dincă3, Paul A. Opler4, Norbert Kondla5, Christian Schmidt6, Jarrett D. Phillips2,7, Robert Robbins8, John M. Burns8, Scott E. Miller8, Nick Grishin9,10, Evgeny V. Zakharov2, Jeremy R. DeWaard2, Sujeevan Ratnasingham2 and Paul D.N. Hebert1,2 1 Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada 2 Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada 3 Ecology and Genetics Research Unit, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland 4 Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, United States of America 5 Unaffiliated, Calgary, Alberta, Canada 6 Canadian National Collection of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes, Agriculture and Agri-Food, Guelph, Ontario, Canada 7 School of Computer Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada 8 Department of Entomology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, United States of America 9 Department of Biophysics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States of America 10 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States of America ABSTRACT Although the butterflies of North America have received considerable taxonomic attention, overlooked species and instances of hybridization continue to be revealed. The present study assembles a DNA barcode reference library for this fauna to identify groups whose patterns of sequence variation suggest the need for further taxonomic study. Based on 14,626 records from 814 species, DNA barcodes were obtained for 96% of the fauna. The maximum intraspecific distance averaged 1/4 the minimum distance to the nearest neighbor, producing a barcode gap in 76% of the species.
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